Migrate VertygoSLA to JIRA Service Desk

Why migrate?

Now VertygoSLA support has come to an end, you may be wondering how can I possibly move from VertygoSLA to JIRA Service Desk?

VertygoSLA is an SLA add-on developed by Valiantys that has since become part of the very popular add-on JIRA Service Desk. Since 2013, Atlassian and Valiantys have recommended that customers move to JIRA Service Desk so they can continue enjoying VertygoSLA features.

So, back to the initial question: how can you move from VertygoSLA to JIRA Service Desk? Well, don’t stress about it too much as it’s actually quite straightforward. Yes, there are a few catches here and there in terms of keywords and costings, but this is something you will grasp easily after reading this blog.

A few things to know before migrating to JIRA Service Desk

Agreement type in VertygoSLA becomes SLA Metric in JIRA Service Desk.

Agreement type in VertygoSLA is shared with all projects, whereas with JIRA Service Desk you need to go to each project and create new ones. I know this can be time-consuming when you have a lot of projects that are dependent on SLAs, but this is why Valiantys can help.

Agreement time in VertygoSLA becomes Goal in JIRA Service Desk.

Similar to the agreement type, you need to go to each project that uses SLA and add those goals to it.

VertygoSLA agreement type conditions work according to events, whereas in JIRA Service Desk conditions work according to status, assigned/unassigned actions and resolution set/clear. With JIRA Service Desk you also have comments for customers and comments by customers to trigger your SLAs.

In VertygoSLA you can have multiple calendars and apply a calendar to an agreement type shared with multiple projects. In JIRA Service Desk you can still have multiple calendars, however you have to create calendars for each project.

The Frozen condition in VertygoSLA is Pause condition in JIRA Service Desk.

You will lose colour schemes with JIRA Service Desk, especially with the dashboard gadgets view. You still have the red and amber colours that come with JIRA Service Desk, which are predefined.

VertygoSLA JQL search works in percentages (i.e. 80% remaining on the SLA), whereas with JIRA Service Desk it works according to hours and minutes.

You lose the negotiated dates feature with JIRA Service Desk.

And a few more…

You also need to find out how many agreement types there are and how many projects are using those – this way you can calculate how many SLA metrics you will need to create for each project. Finding out how many projects are using SLAs will help you work out how long it will take you to move your projects from VertygoSLA to JIRA Service Desk.

Before you can start adding SLA metrics to a JIRA project, you need JIRA Service Desk installed and enabled for these projects.

Once you enable JIRA Service Desk for a project you will fall into agent license, as users who need to be able to perform actions in a JIRA issue require an agent license. So it is important that you find out how many users need to action issues to evaluate the cost implications. It may become a bit painful since its highly likely all your users will need to perform edits, transitioning and assigning, in which case you will need agent license for them all.

Add service-desk-agents group into Global Permission of JIRA Service Desk agent access. After that is done, add yourself to that group for now – this way you can access the projects that you have enabled service desk for. After you have migrated to JIRA Service Desk, you can give your users the agent access they require to work on issues.

Steps

Firstly, you need to look into each agreement type and see the events that are being used to trigger the SLA. You will then have to fire those events within the workflows as JIRA Service Desk conditions depend on workflow actions.

Next, look at the agreement times (goals) that are linked to a particular agreement type (SLA metric) and calendar.

Create calendars for each project.

Create those metrics and add those conditions as goals in JIRA Service Desk with the associated calendar.

Repeat the process for every project that is supposed to be using the SLA feature.

And of course test that it works like VertygoSLA times!

If you would like to know more about how to use JIRA Service Desk for SLA purposes, you can have a look at my previous blog here . This blog was created around version 1 of JIRA Service Desk, however, so there will be slight changes you need to be aware of.

If you would like Valiantys to help you with a move to JIRA Service Desk, get in touch.